Notes from a small island

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New Category – Progressive Labour History

I am happy to announce the creation of a new category for this blog. It joins the existing categories of Announcements, Cultural Criticism, Environment, International Politics, Local Politics, Reviews and Theory (and yes I know its shocking that as a trained biologist and committed eco-socialist I haven’t really posted much under ‘Environment’ yet…).

This new category, Progressive Labour History, is of extreme importance for our time. Not only is the old saying of not knowing where your going if you don’t know where you’ve come from, and the related concept of critically analysing the movements history of direct relevance here, but as the deaths last year of Lois Browne-Evans and Roosevelt Brown/Pauulu Kamarakafego demonstrated, a whole generation is beginning to pass, and with them vast knowledge of our people’s development.

While this category will of course focus on the history of the Progressive Labour Party, my concept of ‘progressive labour’ in small capitals, encompasses a much broader scope. It is my intention here, over time, to provide accounts and documents concerning the struggle for human emancipation on our island since our very colonisation. I see the resistance to slavery, the slave conspiracies, the demonstrations, the strikes, the development of organised labour movements and other social movements as part of the history of progressive labour, and will do my best to cover these issues.

With that said, I doubt there will be any coherent order to what and when I post in this category, but I can tell you that the first posts in this category will be copies of the Progressive Labour Party’s electoral platforms from 1963 to 1980, followed by the minutes of the PLP’s founding meetings in the early 1960s in preparation for the 1963 election.

It is my intention to let these documents stand on their own, allowing for discussion of them in the comments sections. When necessary I will provide a brief introduction to them in order to set them in context.